Happy Thanksgiving [Jim]

Last week I went to the city of Argatala in the State of Tripura on another lecture trip arranged by the US Consulate. Tripura is a rather isolated region in India—-it is the extreme end of the Northeast part of the state. On this trip, the new US Public Affairs Officer was with me—-we had many overlapping activities. The brief overview: we flew in Wednesday morning. I gave a lecture at the postgraduate school of economics at Tripura University. We then went to the Argatala Book Fair-—an event where local publishers set up booths to sell their books. I left that to go meet with some members of the Argatala Chamber of Commerce and discuss business activity in the Northeast. On Thursday, we toured the facilities of the NB Institute of Rural Technology, an NGO which shows people how to use better technology in production. We then went to the Ramakrishna Mission for a tour of the facilities, a discussion with the students and then lunch with some of the monks—-this was an incredibly large lunch. After that, I gave a lecture at the postgraduate school of management at Tripura University. Next was an informal meeting with the local journalists at a facility they use to type their reports. They provided “snacks” for us—-the “snacks” were another large meal, all local tribal food-—excellent taste, but after the large lunch I had just had a few hours ago, it was rather hard to eat enough to show that I did, in fact, like the food. I managed-—as did the others who were with me. After that, I was interviewed by a local reporter. That night, we were all taken out to dinner by someone who had been on a Consulate arranged trip to the US (this is another State Department Program)-—the third huge meal in a span of nine hours. Friday morning, we left the hotel at 6 AM to drive down to one of the local tourist attractions-—a huge, truly huge, palace built up in the middle of a beautiful lake-—quite an impressive sight. Later that day, I had a meeting at the State Institute of Public Administration and Rural Development, which turned out to be a meeting with all the top secretaries in the State of Tripura. (The Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Agriculture, by the ay, are both quite good and interesting people.) Later, I was interviewed by a local television station. Then, finally, I gave a lecture to the Indian Institution of Engineers, a professional organization. Saturday, we came home.

Some notes from the trip:

1. Argatala is the Kingdom of Bugs. I have never seen so many bugs. On Friday morning, the floor of my hotel room was littered with corpses—probably around 200 dead things—a combination of moth-like things and cricket-like things and assorted other things. Before going to bed at night, I had to sweep off the bed to get rid of all the moth-like things. The bathroom also had its fair share of assorted creatures. In the morning, the hotel halls were similarly littered with corpses. And, mind, this is the best hotel in Argatala.

2. The Book Fair was quite a spectacle. The Public Affairs Officer, Doug Kelley, was with me. People in that area were unbelievably excited to have an American Official visiting them. There were about two dozen cameramen surrounding us as we entered and walked around the Book Fair. It was funny watching him-—he is a nice, pleasant guy, but as soon as he enters situations like that he turns into a Diplomat-—he was smooth; I was impressed. The other memorable feature: Imagine what happens when there are lots of bright lights in the Kingdom of Bugs. There must be dozens of pictures of me in Argatala with bugs on my hair, neck, arms, clothes…

3. Even beyond the Book Fair, though, this trip was a media sensation out there-—apparently nobody ever visits the state. There was coverage of our visit every day in all of the papers; my picture is in a go0d chunk of them. I was a front page story in the English language paper. I have no idea what was said about me in most of the papers though since they are in Bengali.

4. The most fascinating news story though came on Thursday. Doug received a call from the Consulate office in Kolkata; they were telling him how sorry they were that he was having so many problems on the trip. He was puzzled at first. It turned out that the Argatala correspondent for a Bengali-language newspaper published in Kolkata had written a story about our visit. It was all about how the Public Affairs Officer had been greeted in Argatala by large anti-American demonstrations and was meeting with a lot of hostility. What is most incredible about that story is that it cannot even be described as exaggeration—-we never saw a single anti-American demonstrator and we never met anyone who expressed anything even remotely resembling hostility. All the local papers had very positive reports of the visit. Yet, there is now a section of the Bengali speaking population in Kolkata who “knows” that there were large anti-American demonstrations in Argatala. No wonder many people in the world don’t like America—-one can only imagine what they read in their daily paper.

5. The NGO was again a rather depressing visit in the end. They have an incredibly impressive facility—-they have whole areas devoted to teaching people how to make cheaper and better walls for houses, plus a complete demonstration house; an area devoted to teaching people how to repair agricultural machinery; and area devoted to teaching people how to make cheaper and better bricks for construction; an area devoted to teaching people how to be better tailors; an area devoted to teaching people how to convert methane gas to power; an area devoted to teaching people how to repair solar panels for use in homes; several classrooms, a hostel for people who are being trained, and a nicely air-conditioned model store showing people how to design better retail outlets—-the store had local handicrafts for sale. They also had assorted animals on display, a few nice looking plant displays and a science center. The tour was most impressive; it looked like an amazing place doing a lot of good. They have a picture of Prince Charles meeting with the founder of the Institute. They are on the tour bus route, so tourists come to visit the facility regularly. Then at the end of this most impressive tour of the facilities, I asked: “How many people come here for training per year.” The answer: 200. Yes, 200—-less than 4 per week on average. They have ten sewing machines alone—-if they had people coming in once a week for the tailoring lessons only, they could train 520 people per year. Multiply that by the number of different training areas they have—-most of which could accommodate at least ten people at a time, and it is readily apparent that we were not visiting a place that actually does much training at all—-it is rather a showplace for tourists, whose tour undoubtedly ends in the nice air-conditioned store. Depressing.

6. The start of this trip was rather rough. On the night before we left, I was running a fever of 102.5. When I woke up, I had a fever of 101.7. I was seriously hoping I would not faint in the middle of a lecture. But, the fever broke mid-morning. I slept a lot on the trip, but fortunately there were no illness related difficulties.

7. I am happy to report that some of the food I ate in Tripura was both clean and served on clean plates.

Other News:

1. I gave a lecture Tuesday at the Megnhad Saha Institute of Management and Technology. This is one of the new (5 years old) private schools in Kolkata. A very nice building out in the middle of nowhere—-we had to travel quite some way down a barely paved one-lane road to get to the facility. The students there were very interesting.

2. For Thanksgiving, we are going over to the Consol General’s house for dinner. He lives in the big Compound as it is officially known. They fly in turkeys for all the Consular Officials, so it will be a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner. I have no idea how many people will be there—-we were at the house the last time we were here (different Consol General) and it is a very nice place with a large backyard for entertaining.

3. I found out that I have an official designation with the State Department for all these trips they arrange. I am a TOO—-Target of Opportunity. They give that designation to people like me who are already in the country, so they can send them out for lectures without having to pay the airfare from the US.

4. On Friday, I will enter my Fifth Decade of Life. In thinking about the first four decades of the Life of Your Humble Narrator, it is terribly obvious that the highlight is Janet. She will be terribly annoyed with me for writing this and putting it on the Web, but since it is soon to be my birthday, I would like to note that there is nothing on Earth that makes me happier than knowing and being married to Janet.

5. Milton Friedman, RIP. I suspect that he will be known to posterity as the greatest economist of the second half of the 20th century. He had more influence on my economic education than any other economist I never met.

6. Book Reports:

a) P. G. Wodehouse: Uncle Fred in the Springtime; Uncle Dynamite

What else can one say about Wodehouse? Every book is exactly the same, and every book is perfect.

b) Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

This was vastly better than I had expected it to be. The chances that I will read *In Cold Blood* in the near future skyrocketed. Capote is an amazing writer; the story was beautifully done. A remarkable portrait.

c) Eliot, The Naming of Cats

I have read these poems before many times, but this was the first time I had the edition with Edward Gorey illustrations—-they are fabulous and add a lot to the poems themselves. Eliot is amazing.

d) Twain, assorted shorter essays and stories

I picked up a copy of one of the Library of America’s Twain collections a few weeks back. [The Library of America books are incredibly good-—great typeset and a wonderful collection of works.] Browsing through the collection was fun—-Twain is a very hit or miss author, but when he hits, he is one-of-a-kind.

7. In the last month, I have checked out copies of books by Roth (Portney’s Complaint) and DeLillo (White Noise). This is all part of my decision to take advantage of being in India and having so much time to read to look into assorted authors whose works I have never read. I quit around page 50 for both of these authors. Now, these are both authors about whom academic critics rave. Both of these novels bored me to tears.

I have read a lot of bad books in my day, but there is something particularly tedious about these works, and it is a quality I have noticed in may other works of contemporary, critically-acclaimed fiction (Updike is a perfect example). I finally put my finger on what it is that annoys me so much about these novels. Their primary quality is Narcissism—it is painfully apparent on every page. And, if I am right about that, it says a lot about what contemporary academic critics like to read about in novels. If anyone can offer up a kind word for any of these author’s, I would be very glad to hear it.

8. Clara was invited to another birthday party yesterday. She is quite the little Party Animal.